The answer is fairly simple. Karl “Fart Blossom” Rove, Machiavellian slimeball extraordinaire, is playing no small part in the McCain campaign. As I predicted back when he “retired”, there was simply no way the man would be able to stop himself from returning for the presidential race. Rove is many things; stupid is not one of them. He’s well aware that the best way to lose this election would be to allow John McCain to run on the issues. What he needed was a running mate. One who could capture the heart of the American conservative base (aka: sheeple) while reeling in some of the disenfranchised middle. Enter Sarah Palin.

Really, it was a stroke of brilliance on Rove’s part, one which woke me up to the fact that McCain has now completely abandoned his core principles. There is no way John McCain would have harped about Barack Obama’s lack of experience for months and months and then turned around and chosen someone so completely lacking themselves. But John McCain is no longer calling the shots. In desperation, he swallowed what was left of his pride and turned to the man who, with lies and distortions, torpedoed his 2000 presidential run.

In return, Rove has delivered. I’ll say this for the man, he knows what people want. An uplifting, heartwarming story. A pretty, plucky small town girl working her way up from beauty queen to reporter to politician, all while raising a family (the Down’s Syndrome kid must’ve been what sold it). Make sure she’s an outsider, so the “maverick” label will stick. Any character flaws or issues can be waved away as “sexism,” thanks to Hillary, or “elitism” thanks to Pat Robertson.

As a result, we have been concentrating on Sarah Palin. Who won’t even be president, should she and McCain be elected. John McCain has sold out every standard and principle he once held for himself and himself alone. He has aligned himself with the people he once denounced, although those people have not changed.

Let us be clear. Karl Rove does not care about the country, about the people his candidates claim to want to help, or about ethics, responsible government or transparency. Karl Rove couldn’t bring himself to care about anything but winning.The fact that the evangelical base has forgotten all about the false promises of Rove of 2000 and 2004 (remember way back to 2006? Y’all weren’t all that happy with the man.) and have duped themselves into believing it all over again. Fool me once, shame on you…fool me 200 or so times, just shoot me, I’m too stupid to live. The fact that these same people are actually lining up to be fooled says something about the American right that I don’t even like to look at too long for fear it’ll rub off.

If Barack Obama has been paying attention at all for the past eight years (and I have to assume he has, although you never know), he will NOT underestimate the depths to which Karl Rove will sink. And he’s going to have to do something that, thus far, he has tried to stay above. He’s going to have to fight fire with fire. It’s going to be ugly, it’s going to get very, VERY dirty. But no less than the fate of our country hangs in the balance. And in the end…Karl Rove needs to be tried for treason.

Karl Rove, Machiavellian slime ball extraordinaire, refused to appear before a Congressional hearing this morning based on….wait for it…executive privelege! I wish I was joking.

That’s right. Mr. Rove is so sure of his place (and rightly so, Bush isn’t going to let anything happen to his beloved Fartblossom) he’s actually stating that he is on the same level as the unitary executive and immune from such silly things as Congressional subpoenas. Enough, already. Send the Sargeant at Arms and frogmarch his ass over to the nearest available jail cell for contempt.

It must be said that it’s intolerable that a man who finds it perfectly acceptable to punish people for imagined wrongdoing considers himself above right and wrong. For over seven years now, we have forgotten the second word in the term “public SERVANT.” Mr. Rove is responsible for helping to pull down most of the foundations on which this country was built. Because of him, historians will point to this as the most disastrous presidency in our history (yes, I know about Buchanan, Harding and Pierce; all richly deserving of the term “some of the worst”….and NO, none of the Presidents since Truman fall under that category with the possible exception of Nixon, but even he was useful…opened up China). Because of him, there is a trench deeper in this nation than has existed since the Civil war. He has put us on the path of our own destruction, and for that he deserves not an inch of leniency or mercy.